tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36764482019-05-19T22:38:34.872+01:00SubclassedPythonaro, oh-oh-oh.toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.comBlogger75125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-25227504373157723642013-05-28T22:14:00.000+01:002013-05-28T22:14:15.229+01:00Social Abstinence<br />
On Saturday evening, I've officially stopped using Facebook, Twitter and G+.<br />
<br />
The reason is that I was sucked into socialmedia-overload by certain political events back in my home town (i.e. a referendum). I unofficially took over a troll-cleaning role and started enjoying the keyboard-warrior role a bit too much. I recognised, halfway through, that my engagement had gone way beyond sane levels. I forced myself to promise that, once <i>the</i> <i>situation</i>&nbsp;was over, I'd stop <i>living on the internet</i> and reassess my life priorities. The night before the referendum was due to be hold, I posted a goodbye status on Facebook, and logged off. Then I went on twitter to say what I'd done, and thought I might as well go the extra mile and quit that as well as G+.<br />
<br />
"We" won that referendum. I like to think that I helped, if just a little bit. Now it's time to re-establish some focus on my own priorities, look outside the window, be a better dad, exercise regularly, that sort of thing.<br />
<br />
If you need me, for the next few months please use email or any other instrument developed in the XX Century. Thank you.<br />
toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-55576097553747409432013-05-16T20:04:00.002+01:002013-05-17T09:44:43.087+01:00Referendum sul Finanziamento delle Materne a Bologna - strumento di analisi(Apologies, this post is for Italian readers only.)<br />
<br />
Il 26 Maggio a Bologna si terrà un <a href="http://referendum.articolo33.org/" target="_blank">referendum consultivo sul finanziamento comunale</a> delle scuole materne pubbliche e private.<br />
<br />
Il quesito chiede agli elettori se i finanziamenti dovrebbero dare priorità alla scuola pubblica (opzione A) piuttosto che continuare a sostenere parzialmente le scuole paritarie private (opzione B). In pratica, si chiede un giudizio sul finanziamento che il Comune eroga dal 1995 alle materne private grazie a una delibera del sindaco di allora, Walter Vitali, approvato nel 1994. Il contributo iniziale (circa 300mila Euro) è cresciuto nel tempo fino agli attuali 1,2 milioni di Euro, in un contesto in cui le scuole comunali si trovano invece in notevoli difficoltà economiche per colpa dei tagli alle amministrazioni locali da parte dei vari governi nazionali. Centinaia di bambini vengono così privati del loro diritto all'istruzione; solo una parte di questi può permettersi di accedere ad una scuola privata, vuoi per ragioni economiche (le paritarie richiedono rette tra i 200 e i 500 euro mensili) o per ragioni culturali (oltre il 90% delle&nbsp;scuole paritarie sono gestite da vari organizzazioni che fanno capo alla Chiesa Cattolica, elemento che si riflette esplicitamente nei loro programmi e regolamenti e, di fatto, nella composizione delle famiglie che ne usufruiscono). Nel 2012/13, 143 bambini sono dovuti rimanere fuori; simili proiezioni circolano per il 2013/14.<br />
<br />
È chiaro che&nbsp;<a href="http://www.wumingfoundation.com/giap/?p=12932" target="_blank">la scelta di chi finanziare con i soldi dei contribuenti è sempre squisitamente politica</a>.&nbsp;L'amministrazione attuale, capitanata dal sindaco Virginio Merola, si è schierata pesantemente a favore del mantenimento dei contributi ai privati ed ha fortemente voluto uno scontro frontale con i referendari. In particolare, da subito il "fronte del B" (che annovera praticamente tutti i partiti maggiori, inclusi quelli di opposizione) ha sostenuto come questa scelta fosse fortemente pragmatica perché, si afferma, non ci sarebbero comunque i soldi per garantire a tutti un posto in scuole pubbliche.<br />
<br />
Per discutere di questa affermazione, ho creato un banale <a href="http://static.pythonaro.com/bologna/" target="_blank">strumento per calcolare il budget delle scuole paritarie e pubbliche a Bologna</a>. Lo strumento mostra come, reindirizzando i contributi pubblici verso scuole comunali, è altamente probabile che si troverebbe lo spazio per accomodare tutti. Cercando di essere obiettivo, lo strumento mostra anche il possibile impatto sulle rette delle scuole private -- che in realtà era la mia motivazione originale quando ho iniziato a lavorarci. I dati utilizzati sono quelli <a href="http://www.comune.bologna.it/news/come-fatta-la-scuola-dell-infanzia-bologna" target="_blank">forniti dallo stesso Comune in una pagina recentemente pubblicata e criticata per i toni non particolarmente <i>super partes</i></a>.<br />
<br />
La critica più facile verso questo strumento è che assume che la domanda per posti privati non sia influenzata dalle possibili variazioni della retta. Purtroppo questo non è calcolabile senza il dato delle iscrizioni pre-1995, <strike>dato che il Comune si guarda bene dal divulgare nonostante le richieste</strike>&nbsp;[<b><i>EDIT</i></b><i>: il Comune ha risposto, dicendo che i posti pre-95 erano "circa 1600"</i>]. Le cifre ufficiose parlano di 1660 iscritti nel '94, contro gli attuali 1736 (o 1961, a seconda se si includono le scuole private tutt'ora non aderenti alla convenzione); <strike>se fosse vero, mostrerebbe che</strike>&nbsp;quindi l'influenza dei cntributi è complessivamente marginale rispetto alla domanda, e quindi il mio modello <strike>rimarrebbe</strike>&nbsp;è sostanzialmente valido. Sono comunque aperto a discutere qualsiasi lacuna: <a href="https://github.com/toyg/bologna" target="_blank">il codice utilizzato è disponibile pubblicamente su Github</a>.<br />
<br />
Per concludere, è chiaro che questo discorso è riduttivo. Il referendum non è solo questione di soldi: in ballo ci sono principi e indirizzi fondamentali a livello etico e politico su chi e come debba gestire l'educazione. Il modello sussidiario, che tanto andava in voga 20 anni fa sull'onda privatizzatoria del post-89, ormai mostra le crepe in Italia come in gran parte d'Europa. Si ricomincia a discutere del ruolo fondamentale dello Stato di tutti, dei beni comuni, del ruolo sociale delle istituzioni collettive; in quest'ottica, è doveroso ridiscutere scelte fatte quasi in sordina (e spesso in una logica di voto di scambio) su cui i bolognesi non hanno mai potuto esprimersi. Questo strumento è solo una risposta all'approccio pragmaticista su cui l'amministrazione comunale ha impostato la sua campagna fino a pochi giorni fa.<br />
<br />
Da buon iscritto AIRE, anch'io posso votare e cercherò di farlo, nonostante le difficoltà logistiche del caso.toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-81687329618007660392012-12-11T23:58:00.001+00:002012-12-11T23:58:37.201+00:00Public therapy<p>I just experienced my first real professional failure in almost two years of consulting for my current employer. I'm not saying I've always been perfect before, but it's the first time a customer basically told me to give up and go home.</p>
<p>As tempted as I am to blame the damn tool (which I had never seen before in my life, and unsurprisingly refused to do my bidding), the hard truth is that:
<ul><li>I failed to properly and fully "sniff out" customer requirements in advance. This should have been a huge red flag, but I thought I was good enough to just deal with it. <b>Lesson 1</b>: there is a reason <i>hubris</i> is a cardinal sin.</li>
<li>On finding myself in trouble, I kept hacking at the problem for days when I should have just taken a step back straight away. I kept googling for a magic bullet, when I should have admitted that I did not know how the product was supposed to work, should have gone back to studying from first principles, and should have built a local proof-of-concept before attempting a real-world deployment. Despite being completely honest with the customer at all times, I ended up over-promising and under-delivering, which is the exact opposite of what I always try to do. <b>Lesson 2</b>: if you find your axe is blunt, hitting faster and from all directions will not compensate; just stop and sharpen up, there is no shame in it.</li>
<li>Because of this "just a little hack" attitude, deep down I was not fully committed and concentrated on the problem. I kept assuming that solving a second main task would "make up" for failure on the first one. Unfortunately, this second task depended in part on other people, who also failed to deliver on time. <b>Lesson 3</b>: <i>deus ex-machina</i> is a literary device, not an action plan and certainly not a <i>plan B</i>. Also <b>Lesson 4</b>: be brutally honest with yourself at all times.</li>
</ul></p>
<p>Obviously, I'm not happy today. Regardless of the actual task at hand, I failed at thinking strategically and being self-aware, and at my age this should not happen; I'm pretty sure I've learnt all these lessons when I was 22, and still managed to forget them. I hope this little recap will help me focus... my next engagement looks like a slam-dunk and I owe to myself to make it so.</p>toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-45573400055267831262010-01-25T11:18:00.003+00:002010-01-25T11:42:22.720+00:00How the Nokia N900 is improving my life<p><small>(Small things, but...)</small></p>
<p>Today I had to took my car to the garage, so had to tell my manager I'd likely be late (public transport is not terrible in our area, but it still takes me about twice the time to get to the office than it would with the car). I'm also down with a laryngitis and I can barely whisper.</p>
<p>I could have booted my home laptop to send an email or IM, but meanwhile the bus would have come and gone. So I hit the road anyway, and thought I would somehow email from the phone.</p>
<p>But then, the Nokia N900 is no Blackberry; it's a full-fledged linux desktop in your pockets. When I enabled the 3G data connection, the button nearby was the one to set your IM status(es) to Online; so I fired that up, looked up my manager in the wonderfully integrated address book, and she was online, so while I sit on the bus, we had a friendly chat about things to do, without having to share them with other commuters or strain my poor throat.</p>
<p>All the while, I was listening to <a href="http://www.awaretek.com/python/">the latest Python 411 podcast</a> about the (apparently terrific and currently-slashdotted) <a href="http://sikuli.org">Sikuli project</a>, updating expenses on the little program I've developed (which I'll upload to the Ovi Store in a few weeks, I promise), and browsing Google Reader. The 30-mins commute was over in what seemed like seconds, and the experience was basically the same I could have had while sitting at my desk with a regular laptop.</p>
<p>This little thing is simply outstanding. Apple's new "iWhatever" better have a SIM slot, or they can kiss goodbye to their iPhone marketshare.</p>toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-64890454229664828842009-11-25T08:32:00.010+00:002009-11-25T09:31:08.270+00:00Passaporto obbligatorio per i bambini da oggi?!? Classico caso di cattivo giornalismo<small>(Apologies, this post is only in Italian)</small>
<p>Questa mattina il Corriere della Sera ha fatto risparmiare qualche litro di caffe' ai poveri genitori di bambini italiani all'estero. Il pezzo <a href="http://www.corriere.it/cronache/09_novembre_24/passaporto_personale_bambini_e64f680a-d925-11de-a7cd-00144f02aabc.shtml">"Anche i bimbi avranno il loro passaporto"</a>, infatti, conteneva abbastanza allarmismo da provocare diversi casi di tachicardia acuta in adulti con prole, quasi tutti in fase di preparazione per l'inevitabile rientro natalizio sul Suolo Patrio.</p>
<p>Tutto grazie alla seguente affermazione (<a href="http://blog.pythonaro.com/static/corriere.png" target="_blank">screenshot per i posteri</a>):</p>
<blockquote>"Dal 25 novembre, tutti i bambini in viaggio all'estero avranno in mano il loro documento con nome e foto, così come prevede la nuova disciplina comunitaria."</blockquote>
<p>Panico. Fino a ieri per i minori bastava essere presenti sul passaporto dei genitori. Per avere un nuovo passaporto ci vuole piu' di un mese! Natale e' il 25 dicembre e il nostro aereo e' fra X giorni! Possibile che il Ministero degli Esteri si sia creato dal nulla una montagna di lavoro proprio sotto Natale?</p>
<p>La risposta e' no. Peccato che il giornalista/scribacchino/redattore che si e' preso la briga di riportare la notizia (probabilmente di agenzia) non abbia nemmeno provato a fare un minimo di verifica o integrazione, magari sul sito della Polizia di Stato (organismo preposto al rilascio dei passaporti), magari leggendo un aggiornamento dal titolo <a href="http://www.poliziadistato.it/articolo/17426-Nuova_disciplina_in_materia_di_passaporti">"Nuova disciplina in materia di passaporti"</a>:</p>
<blockquote>"I passaporti contenenti l'iscrizione di minori rilasciati fino ad oggi rimangono comunque validi fino alla scadenza e tutte le richieste di iscrizione del figlio minore sul proprio passaporto pervenute fino a ieri saranno evase fino al 15 dicembre."</blockquote>
<p>Ergo, l'affermazione che "dal 25 novembre, tutti i bambini in viaggio [...] avranno in mano il loro documento" e' palesemente falsa. E il preoccupato genitore puo' finalmente rilassarsi con una bella tazza di caffe' fumante, magari (per oggi) decaffeinato.</p>toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-8793626701256758342009-11-20T15:26:00.003+00:002009-11-20T15:47:37.776+00:00How to demotivate your workforce<ul><li>tell them they are "high cost" compared to Egyptian, Indian or Rumanian counterparts.</li><li>tell them that, despite the company being afloat in cash, there's no money for pay increases for the N-th year running.</li><li>tell them that the money is "reserved to the mergers&amp;acquisitions strategy". We don't reward our workforce, we reward our competitors; as soon as you can, please go and become one.</li><li>tell them that "promotions with no pay increase" are perfectly normal. Same for workload increases. Imply that you should count yourself lucky to still have a job. The beatings will continue until morale improves. </li><li>tell them that, if you don't like it, they have a choice (i.e. walking). But at the same time, "we have to get better at sharing knowledge". Sure, I'll get to that right away (not).</li><li>give them new internal systems that don't work. When workers complain, dismiss them as whiners. Make sure there is no plan-B after The Big Go-Live. Once TBGL results in complete customer-affecting disaster, panic.
</li></ul>Time to work on personal projects. Big time.
<span style="font-size:78%;">Dear SUN employees in Europe, you really <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> should cheer for the EU. May you be spared a terrible fate.</span>toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-31587289939440863972009-10-22T23:46:00.003+01:002009-10-23T01:03:49.993+01:00Baroness Sayeeda Warsi Is The Perfect Example Of Why The BNP Can Win<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayeeda_Warsi,_Baroness_Warsi">Baroness Sayeeda Warsi</a>, the current Tory Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion, exemplifies why we will always have racist and intolerant fringes in any civilized country.</p>
<p>Her Pakistani parents were allowed to settle in Britain and prosper, so much so that she could go to university in Leeds (when tuition fees were capped, by the way, thanks to public subsidies), then attend the York "Collage" <a href="http://www.sayeedawarsi.com/biography/">[sic]</a> of Law and rise among the ranks of a Tory party desperately looking for credibility with previously-shunned Asian communities. She's one of the sharpest careerists in the country, and was recently nominated as the most powerful Muslim woman in Britain by a magazine poll.</p>
<p>So you have this fantastic example of positive immigration/integration/equality story, a first-generation Pakistani-English woman (!) making waves in a traditionally white/male-dominated right-wing party.</p>
<p>Then she goes on TV, in a debate with the leader of <a href="http://bnp.org.uk">the Inbred Party</a>, and she says "we need to have a cap on immigration numbers, we need to drastically reduce the amount of immigrants". In other words, <b>she wants to stop other people from enjoying the sort of opportunities that her parents (and herself) enjoyed.</b></p>
<p>The astonishing short-sightedness of her statements would be ironic, if it weren't so incredibly sad. It fits very well in a certain stereotypical profile: the American Bush-supporting hardcore Republican with an unmistakably Italian or Irish surname; the Italian member of the Northern League with a Southern face and lots of money from Northern businesses; the Israeli farmer with a Russian accent that won't let Palestinians work his land... Even my Italian-Japanese wife, who studied and settled in Britain thanks to EU subsidies, constantly falls in this sort of rhetorical trap, this idea that there is an emergency (there isn't), social services are collapsing (they aren't), and the country is too full of people (it isn't), so we have to "defend" our hard-earned wealth by kicking out a few poor souls who are slightly different from "us". We "made it", and we have to stop people from competing with us on an equal foot. Jesus and his thing about casting stones <i>has</i> to be "temporarily" put aside.</p>
<p>All this clearly illustrates the age-old concept that <b>the last minority to be oppressed is often the first to oppress another, when given the opportunity</b>. Baroness Warsi, in her political brinkmanship, is playing the inbreds' own game. The inbreds' leader Nick Griffin lost the personality battle tonight (he was clearly shaking and twitching throughout the entire programme, and was forced to admit his dabbling in racist and fascist ideologies), but he won the political battle: a tired Jack Straw was at pains to point out that Labour did not start any policy of migration and inclusion, Baroness Warsi clearly illustrated Tory policy as "inbreeding light" (on the much-exalted -- and highly discriminatory -- Australian model, also recently introduced in the UK by the Labour government), and the very intelligent LibDem guy kept as silent as he could on the subject. No one dared to defend the right of future generations to enjoy the same (very few) opportunities as previous ones, the right to fairness. They all waxed lyrical on the rights of current minorities not to be gassed and deported, but not one word was spent on the minorities of tomorrow. This was a political Dunkerque.</p>
<p>Mainstream parties, if they really want to tackle the inbreds, cannot linger in their trenches; they must get to the offensive. The real problem is how to stop people fighting across racial lines what it's always been (and will always be) first and foremost an economic battle for wealth, a war among the poor. This concept has been lost when traditional Socialism was banished from politics in the 90s, but it's the only way to keep tribalist tendencies at bay. Unless we get back to it, the inbreds will keep winning, because people like Baroness Warsi will always be happy to act as the inbreds' own tool.</p>toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-11397032702303978852009-09-22T10:08:00.004+01:002009-09-22T10:31:55.942+01:00Metaversing<p>Every once in a while, we get an ironic reminder of how mass-literature is fundamentally formulaic. Cartoonists are especially (but not exclusively) fond of this sort of joke, probably because the nature of <i>their</i> work is often dismissed as "repetitive" and they have to get back at (mostly disingenuous) critics. Or maybe they just like playing the smartass.</p>
<p>It is then customary, on my part, to faithfully print the cartoons in question and then point it out to whoever gets around my desk. Some leave in a troubled state of mind, suddenly faced by the emptiness of a universe they hitherto happily inhabited. A few laugh at the old joke. Some think I'm just weird.</p>
<p>Last May, Aaron Diaz's <i>Dresden Codak</i> gave us the already-legendary <a href="http://dresdencodak.com/2009/05/11/42-essential-3rd-act-twists/">42 essential 3rd-act twists by Harvet Ismuths</a>. Today, David Maliki's <i>Wondermark</i> built the phantasmagoric <a href="http://wondermark.com/554/">Electro-Plasmic HydroCephalic Genre-Fiction Generator 2000</a>. They sit perfectly among the other stuff I hang around my pseudo-cubicle, like words by Carlos Williams, Borges and Pi&ntilde;ero. Why keeping beauty out of the office, when there is so much of it?</p>toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-12379270415143150142009-09-14T23:42:00.002+01:002009-09-15T00:00:36.353+01:00On SecrecyIt's been almost a month since my last blogpost. Many, many things happened, but unfortunately I can't talk about them here, as much as I wish that wasn't the case. Hopefully circumstances will get better in 2010. Meanwhile, check out <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093936/">this classic movie</a>, <i>completely</i> unrelated to my situation (oh yeah).toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-85578948091606478452009-08-10T11:31:00.004+01:002009-08-10T11:49:12.712+01:00Apparently, US bureaucrats hate bilingual kids<p><em><a href="http://bloggingonbilingualism.com/2009/05/08/english-proficiency-tests-huh/">Bilingual children surely must be stupid</a></em>. The reasoning behind the process is typical of laws promoted by George W. Bush: if you are not a white man from a privileged "amurrican" background, you surely must be stupid. In this case, it's the "No Child Left Behind" act, which results in "subtle" discriminatory practices towards children of immigrants regardless of their actual skills.</p>toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-21544717426204433602009-06-08T12:50:00.001+01:002009-06-08T12:51:39.036+01:00My new meme<img src="http://blog.pythonaro.com/static/dontblameme.gif" />toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-15670037335590118312009-05-30T09:45:00.007+01:002009-06-03T18:43:48.103+01:00"Sigh. I really wish I could vote Labour, but...""...then they go and put Arlene McCarthy top of the ticket in the North West".<br />
"Do you mean <a href="http://eupat.ffii.org/players/amccarthy/index.en.html">that Arlene McCarthy?</a> The one who pushed so hard for software patents?"<br />
"Yes, <a href="http://kwiki.ffii.org/SwpatamccarthyEn">that Arlene McCarthy</a>."<br />
"Man, that must hurt."<br />
"Indeed. And the other ones in the list look more of the same: people concerned mostly with the welfare of big business."<br />
"But at least the campaign message will surely be about your 'sweet spots': fair opportunities, workers' rights, social Europe..."<br />
"Er, no, actually. It's a riff on protectionist themes: fight for the UK, defend the country, etc. You would easily confuse them for <a href="http://blog.pythonaro.com/2009/05/bnp-inbred-party.html">BNP</a> or <abbr title="UK Independence Party">UKIP</abbr> material."<br />
"I see."<br />
"So it's gonna be Green again, I guess."<br />
"F*ck me, the tree-huggers! Man, you even hate recycling schemes! Are you all right? Let me check your temperature..."<br />
"Actually, their policies are quite sensible these days. They <a href="http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news-archive/2851.html">really get it</a> on technology issues. <a href="http://www.openrightsgroup.org/about-org/org-staff/#Jim">They even have people in the Open Rigths Group</a>."<br />
"Well, ain't you a single-issue voter."<br />
"Single-issue? Labour got it wrong on ALL the issues in the last few years: DRM, net filtering, open source, software patents... they even fought to be exempted from directives on workers' rights!"<br />
"Yeah, but I mean, the enviro-nazi are full-on plane-haters..."<br />
"I don't agree with their shenanigans on Heathrow either, but I think they started to understand that being anti-planes is a lost cause. And we do need more anti-nuclear activists, the original generation basically sold out to Blair."<br />
"What about the Lib-Dems? Apart from Nick 'David Cameron wannabe' Clegg, they do have good people on."<br />
"Yeah, I'm checking them out, but they always leave me underwhelmed. The best one they have, Chris Davies, is top of the ticket and is going to get a seat anyway."<br />
"What about the Tories? David Cameron looks like a nice fellow."<br />
"I'm actually worried by how much I agreed with the Conservative spokesperson on the last BBC Question Time, very intelligent man. But I'm still convinced they'll pull a <abbr title="George Washington Bush">GWB</abbr>-style U-turn as soon as they are in government."<br />
"And I guess you wouldn't consider <abbr title="UK Independence Party">UKIP</abbr>..."<br />
"Are you serious? Their motto is 'we're just xenophobes, not full-on racists like the <a href="http://blog.pythonaro.com/2009/05/bnp-inbred-party.html">BNP</a>'. If they had free reign, I probably couldn't live here."<br />
"That settles it, then. Not that I care, I'll campaign for the one with the bigger tits and beat your silly people anyway."<br />
"Eh. Gotta run now, that's enough politics on the blog for at least another year. It's always so nice talking to you, Mr.Murdoch."
<p>[UPDATE: If you still don't know who to vote for in UK constituencies, have a look at <a href="http://euelection.openrightsgroup.org/">the Open Rights' Group page listing candidate positions on technology issues</a>. It's fantastically simple and well-designed.]</p>toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-27816921545597278852009-05-29T14:50:00.006+01:002009-05-29T15:28:18.506+01:00BNP: the inbred party<p>I try not to worry about political issues too much these days, but this post is not really about politics. <i>Comedy</i>, rather.</p>
<p>David Ottewell, aggravated by people doubting the veracity of reports depicting <acronym title="British National Party">BNP</acronym> members as full-on racists, <a href="http://blogs.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/politics/2009/05/post_700.html">reposted</a> part of <a href="http://bnp.org.uk/Constitution%209th%20Ed%20Sep%202005.pdf">their constitution</a>.</p>
<blockquote><i><ol><li>The British National Party represents the collective National, Environmental, Political, Racial, Folkish, Social, Cultural, Religious and Economic interests of the indigenous Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Norse folk communities of Britain and those we regard as closely related and ethnically assimilated or assimilable aboriginal members of the European race also resident in Britain. <b>Membership of the BNP is strictly defined within the terms of, and our members also self define themselves within, the legal ambit of a defined ‘racial group’</b> this being ‘Indigenous Caucasian’ and defined ‘ethnic groups’ emanating from that Race as specified in law in the House of Lords case of Mandla V Dowell Lee (1983) 1 ALL ER 1062, HL.</li><li>The indigenous British ethnic groups deriving from the class of ‘Indigenous Caucasian’ consist of members of: <ol><li>The Anglo-Saxon Folk Community;</li><li>The Celtic Scottish Folk Community; </li><li>The Scots-Northern Irish Folk Community; </li><li>The Celtic Welsh Folk Community; </li><li>The Celtic Irish Folk Community; </li><li>The Celtic Cornish Folk Community; </li><li>The Anglo-Saxon-Celtic Folk Community; </li><li>The Celtic-Norse Folk Community; </li><li>The Anglo-Saxon-Norse Folk Community; </li><li>The Anglo-Saxon-Indigenous European Folk Community; </li><li>Members of these ethnic groups who reside either within or outside Europe but ethnically derive from them.</ol></li><li><b>Membership of the party shall be open only to those who are 16 years of age or over and whose ethnic origin is listed within Sub-section 2</b></li></ol></i></blockquote>
<p>The Anglo-Saxon-Norse Welsh-Scottish and Norse-Irish Celtic "Folk Communities" didn't make the list; was it an oversight, or is it because everyone knows they're a bunch of lazy asylum seekers? I'd also be curious to understand how they can check these prerequisites before admission, but I guess this is an implementation detail.</p>
<p>What really matters, though, is the typical trademark of nazi paranoia: the obsession to precisely classify races on the basis of imaginary concepts. The classic result is this exact sort of documents, produced by people who fail to see the absurdity of their own statements and the self-offensive message they really communicate. What this document really says is that <i><b>"<acronym title="British National Party">BNP</acronym> members are all inbred"</b></i>. I wonder if that is appealing to their target demographic.</p>toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-59859014621667497702009-04-21T06:43:00.002+01:002009-04-21T07:22:37.122+01:00On Toggl<p>I started tracking my activities using <a href="http://www.toggl.com">Toggl</a>. The concept is very simple: the site gives you a timer that you can "toggle" to signal when you are starting a certain task. You define different tasks and group them into projects, and you can mark "billable" hours as such (clearly a feature for consultants / freelancers). It features reports (obviously) and other workgroup-related options, a dotNet-based offline tracker, and premium options for paid subscribers.</p> <p>The first day I used it, it was enlightening: it turns out that I only spent about 3 hours doing actual "core" work. Most of the remaining time was wasted being sidetracked by other internal projects, plus random chitchat. Ok, it was the day <a href="http://www.sun.com/third-party/global/oracle/">Oracle bought Sun</a>, and we were pretty psyched about it (especially me, as the first thought I had when news emerged about the botched <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/finance?q=NYSE:IBM">IBM</a>/SUN deal was "well, [<a href="http://www.google.co.uk/finance?q=NASDAQ:ORCL">Oracle</a>] would be a much better fit than IBM; db appliances would be very sexy, and most of [Oracle]'s stack is Java-based already", and the others were all "yeah, keep dreaming!"... then Larry vindicated me), I expect the numbers to get better. If they don't, it means my routine needs improving and I'll work on that, but I feel that without Toggl I probably wouldn't have the sort of hindsight that gives a sense of achieving, which is necessary to maintain continuous efforts.</p> <p>All in all, Toggl feels cool. Other project-management sites should take note.</p> toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-14051899323064005252009-04-13T18:58:00.004+01:002009-04-13T19:35:34.311+01:00One of the (many) problems of modern education...<p>...is that logic and rhetoric are not taught well, or (like in my experience) not taught at all.</p>
<p>This is reflected in the political debate, which is getting dumbed-down to the point where rational arguments can be completely absent; and it can be seen all over "teh intarwebs", where multitudes of well-intentioned individuals routinely end up acting like trolls.</p>
<p>One should be able to understand when he is losing the rational argument, and either retreat, reformulate, move the subject onto a different field, or try to bluff his way through. By banging on about the same, lost point over and over again, one doesn't do himself any favour; he might be able to appeal to the basest instincts of some individuals, but he won't be able to win intelligent men to his cause.</p>
<p>I have to admit, I have been guilty of this behaviour several times during the years. I put it down to my lack of knowledge of the abovementioned fields. At school, they taught us how to analyse sentences for syntactical structure, but rarely for meaning, and never for logic. They told us how to write in a readable style, but didn't really ask us to understand where we are in a debate, how to interact strategically during a verbal confrontation, how to step back from the heat and think hard about your next rhetorical move.</p>
<p>Is it a form of large conspiracy, where upper classes try to maintain old privileges by "forgetting" to properly teach these subjects to the uninitiated? Or could it be that these are considered too dangerous a weapon, too prone to abuse, to be widely taught? Or is it simply that education topics are constantly squeezed by the furious pace of technological advancement, to the point where you <i>need</i> to teach kids how to work with newer and newer devices which are <i>fundamental</i> to the current way of life (computer, tv, ipods etc etc)?</p>
<p>In any case, it feels like some of the oldest fields of study ever taught ended up being victims of accomplished mass-scholarisation. I don't think this is helping the masses or anyone else, though.</p>toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-81532402824358301792009-04-02T11:37:00.005+01:002009-04-02T14:57:51.017+01:00Come on Bosnia!<table class="shorttable" border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0">
<tbody><tr class="header">
<td class="c1">&nbsp;</td>
<td class="c2">&nbsp;</td>
<td class="c3"><span class="rhst">P</span></td>
<td class="c4"><span class="rhst">W</span></td>
<td class="c5"><span class="rhst">D</span></td>
<td class="c6"><span class="rhst">L</span></td>
<td class="c7"><span class="rhst">F</span></td>
<td class="c8"><span class="rhst">A</span></td>
<td class="c9"><span class="rhst">GD</span></td>
<td class="c10"><span class="rhst">PTS</span></td>
</tr>
<tr class="r2">
<td class="c1">1</td>
<td class="c2">Spain</td>
<td class="c3">6</td>
<td class="c4">6</td>
<td class="c5">0</td>
<td class="c6">0</td>
<td class="c7">13</td>
<td class="c8">2</td>
<td class="c9">11</td>
<td class="c10">18</td>
</tr>
<tr class="r1" style="font-weight:bold; background-color:green; color: yellow;">
<td class="c1">2</td>
<td class="c2"><a href="http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/preliminaries/europe/teams/team=44037/index.html">Bosnia-Herzegovina</a></td>
<td class="c3">6</td>
<td class="c4">4</td>
<td class="c5">0</td>
<td class="c6">2</td>
<td class="c7">18</td>
<td class="c8">7</td>
<td class="c9">11</td>
<td class="c10">12</td>
</tr>
<tr class="r2">
<td class="c1">3</td>
<td class="c2">Turkey</td>
<td class="c3">6</td>
<td class="c4">2</td>
<td class="c5">2</td>
<td class="c6">2</td>
<td class="c7">6</td>
<td class="c8">5</td>
<td class="c9">1</td>
<td class="c10">8</td>
</tr>
<tr class="r1">
<td class="c1">4</td>
<td class="c2">Belgium</td>
<td class="c3">6</td>
<td class="c4">2</td>
<td class="c5">1</td>
<td class="c6">3</td>
<td class="c7">10</td>
<td class="c8">11</td>
<td class="c9">-1</td>
<td class="c10">7</td>
</tr>
<tr class="r2">
<td class="c1">5</td>
<td class="c2">Estonia</td>
<td class="c3">6</td>
<td class="c4">1</td>
<td class="c5">2</td>
<td class="c6">3</td>
<td class="c7">5</td>
<td class="c8">15</td>
<td class="c9">-10</td>
<td class="c10">5</td>
</tr>
<tr class="r1">
<td class="c1">6</td>
<td class="c2">Armenia</td>
<td class="c3">6</td>
<td class="c4">0</td>
<td class="c5">1</td>
<td class="c6">5</td>
<td class="c7">3</td>
<td class="c8">15</td>
<td class="c9">-12</td>
<td class="c10">1</td>
</tr></tbody>
</table>
<p>Only Germany and Poland managed to score 18 goals. After champagne-football, will we have <a href="http://easteuropeanfood.about.com/od/sausages/r/cevapcici.htm">cevapcici</a>-football ?</p>toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-88562336176459260312009-02-06T23:41:00.004+00:002009-04-25T18:19:51.958+01:00I hate you, Sam Mendes<p>Dear Sam,<br />
I have to say, I really hate you. You keep shattering my little dreams of suburban happiness, my little delusions of American Dream; you keep poking your nosey finger at my fears, my neuroses, my false hopes... and for what? For a few bucks more? A few awards more? Didn't you get enough of those with American Beauty and whatnot? No, you had to come back here, you clever bastard, ruining our little and insignificant lives just so that you can keep happy your coke dealer. And this time even <em>with good actors!</em> You really have some gall, I tell you.</p>
<p>Well, I have to say your <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0959337/">Revolutionary Road</a> really <em>is</em> "working the magic" (even though the plot is slightly predictable, but we got to expect that from you). I hope you are happy.</p>
<p>Now take those big bags of money and get the f**k off my lawn. I'm still paying for it, y'know.</p>toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-83975010886690291902009-01-15T18:17:00.003+00:002009-01-15T18:23:16.344+00:00"See the market and then die"<p>From medical journal <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)60005-2/fulltext">TheLancet</a>: <blockquote>"Mass privatisation programmes were associated with an increase in short-term adult male mortality rates of 12·8%"</blockquote></p>
<p>(via <a href="http://mir.it/servizi/ilmanifesto/estestest/?p=150">Astrit Dakli</a>, who translates that percentage to real numbers: 1 million dead.)</p>toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-4410869568737177042008-12-31T15:22:00.002+00:002008-12-31T15:45:44.595+00:002009 "Year of the Aquarius"<p>Planet Jupiter moves to the Aquarius sector in 2009, and this is supposed to be a good thing for people born (like me) between 21th January and 19th February. Or so my mother says, in her crazy Italian way where "everybody knows" these things are b*llocks but they still believe them "just in case" (exactly like they do with Catholicism and Hell, by the way).</p>
<p>It certainly won't be an easy year for me, with the new "cryware/nappieware" scheduled for release around July. Things will get pretty hectic, I guess.</p>
<p>On a less personal note, lots of people said 2008 was "The Year of Obama", "The Year of the Crisis" or even "The Year of YouTube". They are Wrong. Sorry Barack, 2008 was "The Year of ABBA".</p>
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<p>See you in 2009, perverts.</p>toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-61975561932373723742008-12-19T07:35:00.002+00:002008-12-19T08:58:44.959+00:00La mia Italia<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandro_Pertini"><img src="http://blog.pythonaro.com/static/Sandro_Pertini_Spagna_1982.jpg"></a>
<cite title="Sandro Pertini on Socialism">Libert&agrave; e giustizia sociale, che sono poi le mete del socialismo, costituiscono un binomio inscindibile. Se a me socialista offrissero la riforma pi&ugrave; radicale sul piano sociale, ma privandomi della libert&agrave;, io la rifiuterei. [...] Ma la libert&agrave; senza giustiza sociale pu&ograve; anche essere una conquista vana. Lei pu&ograve; considerare veramente libero un uomo che ha fame, che &egrave; nella miseria, che non ha lavoro, che &egrave; umiliato perch&eacute; non sa come mantenere i suoi figli e educarli? Questo non &egrave; un uomo libero; sar&agrave; libero di bestemmiare e di imprecare, ma questa non &egrave; la libert&agrave; che intendo io.</cite> -- Alessandro Pertinitoyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-39217733287026461692008-11-09T12:17:00.006+00:002008-11-20T13:48:58.631+00:00Crunching Numbers<p>During the last couple of day, I spent my free time trying to sort out the family finances; big (good) changes are on the horizon, we need to plan a bit better from now on, and it's amazing how "bad" expenses stick out straight away when you aggregate them, instead of relying just on rough day-by-day cash-flow estimates ("how much money is still in my account?").</p>
<p>I tried to use <a href="http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net">KMyMoney</a> for this sort of thing several times in the past, but I was always inevitably thwarted by the effort required to copy records one-by-one from online bank statements, because the sort of bank accounts I use don't allow any desktop clients to automatically pull data. So this time I thought I'd fix it once and for all, and set down to write a few scripts to do that, albeit in a somehow indirect way.</p>
<p>KMyMoney can natively import transactions in the legacy (and wildly non-standard) <abbr title="Quicken Interchange Format">QIF</abbr> format, while <abbr title="Open Financial Exchange">OFX</abbr> requires a plugin (why? No idea). Unfortunately, on my Debian Etch, the bloody plugin somehow never gets installed correctly, but hey, maybe one day it will, and <abbr title="Open Financial Exchange">OFX</abbr> is the way of the future anyway (it's <abbr title="eXtensible Markup Language">XML</abbr>-based and much more exactly specified than the old plaintext-based, informal <abbr title="Quicken Interchange Format">QIF</abbr>). So I wrote a Python script to convert the <abbr title="Hyper-Text Markup Language">HTML</abbr> or <abbr title="Comma-Separated Values">CSV</abbr> produced by my online accounts to <abbr title="Open Financial Exchange">OFX</abbr>, then passed the output to ofx2qif, a handy script included in the libofx-dev package (at least in the 0.8.2 version I'm using). The result is ready to be imported in KMyMoney. Slightly cumbersome, but it does the trick. I need to add a bit more intelligence to the scripts, to speed up the categorisation effort that follows (which is the whole point of the exercise), e.g. "LINK xxxxxx" payees should all be set to "cash machine" etc, but it's already working fairly well.</p>
<p>The effect was startling; finally, all my expenses are tracked and I can properly budget and forecast. <small><i>(...How the hell I'm spending so much on mobile-phone calls??)</i></small></p>
<p>I'm actually slightly pissed off that cash transactions are now so <i>opaque</i>; I've no idea why &pound;50 were withdrawn from an <abbr title="Automated teller machine">ATM</abbr> on that January day (even though I'm sure it made sense when I first checked the statement 6+ months ago), but I know for a fact that those &pound;37.68 from last December were for a delicious Japanese dinner, as I paid for it with my debit-card.<br />In a way, this goes against the "classic" principle that "by using plastic, you never really know how much money you <i>don't</i> have" (so you tend to spend more). I still believe in that principle, and I'm slightly baffled by the evidence.</p>
<p>I'd strongly recommend this sort of exercise to everyone, anyway. You don't need to use a dedicated program like KMyMoney (even though it helps), Excel might be enough, as long as you can easily add transactions from your online account (via CSV or cut&amp;paste).</p>toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-25062806640612780252008-11-05T03:09:00.005+00:002008-11-05T03:47:26.737+00:00The American Dream is back<p>I left the office at the beginning of October saying "When I'm back, Obama will be the President Elect!"; people laughed and said it was too early to call. Well, I called the Democratic primaries for Obama in February; <i>that</i> was difficult.</p><p>Note: I'm slightly pissed off that the <abbr title="British Broadcasting Corporation">BBC</abbr> is giving space to John Bolton.</p>toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-65513629447839910262008-11-05T00:53:00.004+00:002008-11-05T01:06:34.526+00:00Back to the cold shores of England...<p>... and jet-lagged enough to follow yet another <abbr title="United States of America">USA</abbr> presidential show. After two episodes with villains winning, it's about time for the good guys to score one, or it will become a <i>clich&eacute;</i>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/4/122035/550/404/652512">Someone is liveblogging on dailykos</a>, if you can't stand the usual round of useless TV pundits.</p>toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-37375520408638521732008-10-24T08:45:00.004+01:002008-10-24T08:52:27.864+01:00Kanazawa blues<p>Weather yesterday turned to a very Mancunian-style rain, so our days in Kanazawa feel a bit sad.</p><p>I love tatami rooms, I want one in my next house.</p><p>(oh, and the japanese keyboard is hell.)</p>toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3676448.post-40254742955516816322008-10-18T05:35:00.002+01:002008-10-18T05:48:31.780+01:00in Kyoto<p>Konban-wa!</p><p>We've been in Japan for just five days but it feels like we've packed in a lot, mainly thanks to my wife's perfect organization, I mainly stroll around carrying bags and saying "Oishi-ne", "lovely food"!</p><p>
We spent the first few days in Tokyo, breathing in modern Japan, with skyscraping malls "bolted on" the immense train stations. People in every directions, but everything flows so smoothly, and it's so incredibly clean everywhere, I have no idea how they do it. It's "organized delirium" to a level Europeans cannot really comprehend, I think.</p><p>
We are now in Kyoto, the "old capital", ready for a smorgasbord of "classical Japanese style" (temples, castles, Zen gardens etc), then we'll hit the road to see some rural areas in the northern mountains before going back to Tokyo for the final souvenir-shopping experience. </p><p>
"Unfortunately", the food here is so good that I won't be able to lose any weight during this trip. Well, too bad, eh ;)</p><p>toyghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04499664589774142384noreply@blogger.com0